Found my old wallet.dat which seems to be corrupted. Please Help.

nc50lc

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Quote from: givemebackmybtc on November 11, 2022, 02:35:18 PM

Different versions of pywallet end up dumping the same exact private key Undecided

Try to run: pywallet --tests
And see if you will get encoding-related errors.

Just to be sure, does your importprivkey command looks like this?:

Code:

importprivkey "51qecEjLcNQony2W6PrivateKeyNotValidq4dfJP8sHgeVKaU3"

Code:

importprivkey "51qecEjLcNQony2W6PrivateKeyNotValidq4dfJP8sHgeVKaU3" "label" true

No other signs aside from the quotation marks or even without those.

givemebackmybtc

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Quote from: nc50lc on November 10, 2022, 11:55:20 PM

Quote from: givemebackmybtc on November 10, 2022, 02:23:47 PM

Then I used pywallet to dump the keys from the corrupted wallet.dat file that was found. In the wallet.text file that pywallet generated, I found this 51 character key, along with an address. The address is valid and had one transaction as per blockchain explorer all the way back from 2011. Its a miniscule amount, though worth recovering as I am taking this as a learning experience incase I find the real missing wallet.

Does the "51 character key" written next to "sec":?
Because that's the WIF prvKey of the address above it; if it's in any other line, it's just a coincidence.

IDK if Pywallet will be able to dump corrupted private keys but since you're copy-pasting and it's invalid, then it might be the case.
But it's the encoding that's the issue and raw prvKeys in wallet.dat files aren't base58check encoded, perhaps it's an issue in Pywallet, try an earlier version.

Different versions of pywallet end up dumping the same exact private key Undecided

Last option, try to fully restore the deleted files from the HDD, and see if I can find the actual wallet.dat file manually.

I'm guessing like you mentioned the wallet.dat is too corrupt and it won't dump the keys correctly.

Berkeleydb1

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Quote from: givemebackmybtc on November 11, 2022, 12:36:47 PM

Quote from: nc50lc on November 10, 2022, 11:55:20 PM

Quote from: givemebackmybtc on November 10, 2022, 02:23:47 PM

Then I used pywallet to dump the keys from the corrupted wallet.dat file that was found. In the wallet.text file that pywallet generated, I found this 51 character key, along with an address. The address is valid and had one transaction as per blockchain explorer all the way back from 2011. Its a miniscule amount, though worth recovering as I am taking this as a learning experience incase I find the real missing wallet.

Does the "51 character key" written next to "sec":?
Because that's the WIF prvKey of the address above it; if it's in any other line, it's just a coincidence.

IDK if Pywallet will be able to dump corrupted private keys but since you're copy-pasting and it's invalid, then it might be the case.
But it's the encoding that's the issue and raw prvKeys in wallet.dat files aren't base58check encoded, perhaps it's an issue in Pywallet, try an earlier version.

Yes the key sits next to sec:

I'll try dumping they keys using a different version of pywallet

Hello my friend i need a guide for macomk pywallet. I'm a beginner and I don't have enough knowledge, can you please explain like you would to an idiot? I've been waiting for months I need your help for macomk, please help.

givemebackmybtc

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Quote from: nc50lc on November 10, 2022, 11:55:20 PM

Quote from: givemebackmybtc on November 10, 2022, 02:23:47 PM

Then I used pywallet to dump the keys from the corrupted wallet.dat file that was found. In the wallet.text file that pywallet generated, I found this 51 character key, along with an address. The address is valid and had one transaction as per blockchain explorer all the way back from 2011. Its a miniscule amount, though worth recovering as I am taking this as a learning experience incase I find the real missing wallet.

Does the "51 character key" written next to "sec":?
Because that's the WIF prvKey of the address above it; if it's in any other line, it's just a coincidence.

IDK if Pywallet will be able to dump corrupted private keys but since you're copy-pasting and it's invalid, then it might be the case.
But it's the encoding that's the issue and raw prvKeys in wallet.dat files aren't base58check encoded, perhaps it's an issue in Pywallet, try an earlier version.

Yes the key sits next to sec:

I'll try dumping they keys using a different version of pywallet

nc50lc

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Quote from: givemebackmybtc on November 10, 2022, 02:23:47 PM

Then I used pywallet to dump the keys from the corrupted wallet.dat file that was found. In the wallet.text file that pywallet generated, I found this 51 character key, along with an address. The address is valid and had one transaction as per blockchain explorer all the way back from 2011. Its a miniscule amount, though worth recovering as I am taking this as a learning experience incase I find the real missing wallet.

Does the "51 character key" written next to "sec":?
Because that's the WIF prvKey of the address above it; if it's in any other line, it's just a coincidence.

IDK if Pywallet will be able to dump corrupted private keys but since you're copy-pasting and it's invalid, then it might be the case.
But it's the encoding that's the issue and raw prvKeys in wallet.dat files aren't base58check encoded, perhaps it's an issue in Pywallet, try an earlier version.

givemebackmybtc

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Quote from: BlackHatCoiner on November 10, 2022, 12:26:46 PM

Quote from: givemebackmybtc on November 09, 2022, 07:27:38 PM

Unfortunately I tired both methods previously and still got the same error.

As nc50lc has pointed out, if after import of the private key to Bitcoin Core you get an encoding error, it means that the WIF (Wallet Import Format) is invalid.

Quote from: givemebackmybtc on November 10, 2022, 12:14:46 PM

There are no I, l, O, or 0 in the private key

I'd bet that you've misread a character, or written a character wrongly. If it's a 51-character long private key, that starts with 5, and has no I, l, 0, and O, then there has to be something wrong with you, or with the software that generated it back then.

Please confirm it for me: do you feel 100% confident that you can't have possibly made a mistake during writing, and it's crystal clear what the characters are?

So what happened is I used the old 'Bitcoin Wallet Recovery' tool I linked in my OP to search for this wallet on an old formatted drive. It managed to find one wallet, but it was corrupted.

Then I used pywallet to dump the keys from the corrupted wallet.dat file that was found. In the wallet.text file that pywallet generated, I found this 51 character key, along with an address. The address is valid and had one transaction as per blockchain explorer all the way back from 2011. Its a miniscule amount, though worth recovering as I am taking this as a learning experience incase I find the real missing wallet.

So not sure where things have gone wrong in the process, potentially the wallet.dat is incomplete or partially overwritten and pywallet generates an incorrect key because of this. For all I know the address could be incorrectly generated as well. But what are the odds of generating a random public address that has some balance Shocked

. I have no records of this address but it suits the timeline for the wallet I was originally looking for but not the amount.

BlackHatCoiner

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Quote from: givemebackmybtc on November 09, 2022, 07:27:38 PM

Unfortunately I tired both methods previously and still got the same error.

As nc50lc has pointed out, if after import of the private key to Bitcoin Core you get an encoding error, it means that the WIF (Wallet Import Format) is invalid.

Quote from: givemebackmybtc on November 10, 2022, 12:14:46 PM

There are no I, l, O, or 0 in the private key

I'd bet that you've misread a character, or written a character wrongly. If it's a 51-character long private key, that starts with 5, and has no I, l, 0, and O, then there has to be something wrong with you, or with the software that generated it back then.

Please confirm it for me: do you feel 100% confident that you can't have possibly made a mistake during writing, and it's crystal clear what the characters are?

givemebackmybtc

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Quote from: nc50lc on November 09, 2022, 09:47:44 PM

Quote from: givemebackmybtc on November 09, 2022, 08:50:57 AM

Quote from: nc50lc on November 08, 2022, 08:37:49 AM

-snip-

Now this isn't the wallet I am looking for as it only has .03 btc, the one I'm looking for has more (glad I at least found something after all, its worth $300-400 so worth getting recovered), but when I input the key in Bitcoin Core, I get "Invalid private key encoding (code -5)".

The private key I have starts with a 5 and is 51 characters.

The number of characters seems right for an uncompressed WIF prvKey
But the error suggests that some of the characters aren't base58, it has invalid checksum or there's at least one wrong character;
is there any I, l (lower-case L), O (upper-case o), 0 (zero) in your prvKey? If so, it may not be a WIF prvKey.

BTW, it's case-sensitive in case it's manually typed.

There are no I, l, O, or 0 in the private key Huh

I'm just copy pasting from the wallet.text that pywallet generated

nc50lc

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Quote from: givemebackmybtc on November 09, 2022, 08:50:57 AM

Quote from: nc50lc on November 08, 2022, 08:37:49 AM

-snip-

Now this isn't the wallet I am looking for as it only has .03 btc, the one I'm looking for has more (glad I at least found something after all, its worth $300-400 so worth getting recovered), but when I input the key in Bitcoin Core, I get "Invalid private key encoding (code -5)".

The private key I have starts with a 5 and is 51 characters.

The number of characters seems right for an uncompressed WIF prvKey
But the error suggests that some of the characters aren't base58, it has invalid checksum or there's at least one wrong character;
is there any I, l (lower-case L), O (upper-case o), 0 (zero) in your prvKey? If so, it may not be a WIF prvKey.

BTW, it's case-sensitive in case it's manually typed.

givemebackmybtc

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Quote from: BlackHatCoiner on November 09, 2022, 04:28:51 PM

Quote from: givemebackmybtc on November 09, 2022, 08:50:57 AM

Do I need to download an old Bitcoin Core client for it to import properly?

No. Bitcoin Core v23.0 does support import of uncompressed private keys. To do this (on QT), you need to create a new wallet with "Descriptor Wallet" unchecked, and on the console enter the following:

Code:

importprivkey YOUR_PRIVATE_KEY_THAT_STARTS_WITH_5

If QT is not available, run the following in CLI:

Code:

bitcoin-cli -named createwallet wallet_name=some_wallet_name descriptors=false
bitcoin-cli importprivkey YOUR_PRIVATE_KEY_THAT_STARTS_WITH_5

Unfortunately I tired both methods previously and still got the same error.

BlackHatCoiner

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Farewell, Leo

Quote from: givemebackmybtc on November 09, 2022, 08:50:57 AM

Do I need to download an old Bitcoin Core client for it to import properly?

No. Bitcoin Core v23.0 does support import of uncompressed private keys. To do this (on QT), you need to create a new wallet with "Descriptor Wallet" unchecked, and on the console enter the following:

Code:

importprivkey YOUR_PRIVATE_KEY_THAT_STARTS_WITH_5

If QT is not available, run the following in CLI:

Code:

bitcoin-cli -named createwallet wallet_name=some_wallet_name descriptors=false
bitcoin-cli importprivkey YOUR_PRIVATE_KEY_THAT_STARTS_WITH_5

givemebackmybtc

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Quote from: nc50lc on November 08, 2022, 08:37:49 AM

Quote from: givemebackmybtc on November 08, 2022, 08:17:38 AM

It asked for a passphrase and I inserted several that could be, will it still recover the files if the passphrase was incorrect?

No, it will create a "recovered-wallet.dat" but it wont contain any keys.
But it will detect that there are possible encrypted keys that weren't decrypted if your passphrase is incorrect.

For the passphrase, the first query will be the recovered wallet's passphrase.
The possible passphrase(es) of the to-be-recovered wallet will be asked after that.

Good news and bad news.

Bad news, pywallet didn't manage to print anything after nearly a whole day search.

Good news, I ran the corrupt wallet command using pywallet on the file I initially found using the other tool, and it managed to pull a public address and what looks like a private key.

Now this isn't the wallet I am looking for as it only has .03 btc, the one I'm looking for has more (glad I at least found something after all, its worth $300-400 so worth getting recovered), but when I input the key in Bitcoin Core, I get "Invalid private key encoding (code -5)".

The private key I have starts with a 5 and is 51 characters.

Did some googling but none of the solutions I found worked.

Do I need to download an old Bitcoin Core client for it to import properly?

nc50lc

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Quote from: givemebackmybtc on November 08, 2022, 08:17:38 AM

It asked for a passphrase and I inserted several that could be, will it still recover the files if the passphrase was incorrect?

No, it will create a "recovered-wallet.dat" but it wont contain any keys.
But it will detect that there are possible encrypted keys that weren't decrypted if your passphrase is incorrect.

For the passphrase, the first query will be the recovered wallet's passphrase.
The possible passphrase(es) of the to-be-recovered wallet will be asked after that.

givemebackmybtc

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Yes, now its running fine.

It asked for a passphrase and I inserted several that could be, will it still recover the files if the passphrase was incorrect?

nc50lc

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You might have downloaded the wrong pywallet since it has an HTML file declaration in line 8: "".
I think it's an HTML file which is for websites, not a python program.

Get it from this GitHub repository: https://github.com/jackjack-jj/pywallet

givemebackmybtc

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Quote from: nc50lc on November 07, 2022, 11:09:30 PM

Quote from: givemebackmybtc on November 07, 2022, 11:57:48 AM

I've been scouring through my old hard drives to find an old wallet containing some BTC I purchased many years ago, 8-10 years ago approximately. -snip-

Was your wallet encrypted with a password?
Because if it was, the tool that you've used cannot properly recover from an encrypted wallet, even on its last update, version 0.3.
It's noted on top of the thread.

Quote from: givemebackmybtc on November 07, 2022, 10:33:20 AM

With all the above in mind, a few questions come to mind.

1- Could this be a partially recovered wallet since the sequences mentioned above are all followed by zeros, file size is too small, and the hex file is generally empty?
2- The wallet is possibly encrypted and hex editor will not reveal any keys?
3- Has the wallet file been partially overwritten?
4- Are there any other methods I can use to rescan and extract the wallet file?

Since that tool doesn't support encrypted wallets, the recovered wallet may not contain any keys.

Since salvage didn't work,
You can try pywallet's recov tool which supports encrypted wallets, here's an example command and link to the tool: /index.php?topic=5408068.msg60653031#msg60653031
It requires old python2.x to work. (check the repository for the requirements & dependencies)

EDIT: OK I figured it out. Had the html of the github downloaded instead of the actual script. Now the search is running. I'll report back if it finds anything.

Many thanks!

I do not remember if it was encrypted. If it was I have some password combos in mind that I can try once I find the wallet.

I have Python2.7 installed and I tired to run the pywallet recover command but I keep getting this error:

Code:

C:\Python27>python pywallet.py --recover --recov_device=D: --recov_size=2000Gio --recov_outputdir=C:\pywallet_recov_dir
  File "pywallet.py", line 8
    
    ^
SyntaxError: invalid syntax

nc50lc

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Quote from: givemebackmybtc on November 07, 2022, 11:57:48 AM

I've been scouring through my old hard drives to find an old wallet containing some BTC I purchased many years ago, 8-10 years ago approximately. -snip-

Was your wallet encrypted with a password?
Because if it was, the tool that you've used cannot properly recover from an encrypted wallet, even on its last update, version 0.3.
It's noted on top of the thread.

Quote from: givemebackmybtc on November 07, 2022, 10:33:20 AM

With all the above in mind, a few questions come to mind.

1- Could this be a partially recovered wallet since the sequences mentioned above are all followed by zeros, file size is too small, and the hex file is generally empty?
2- The wallet is possibly encrypted and hex editor will not reveal any keys?
3- Has the wallet file been partially overwritten?
4- Are there any other methods I can use to rescan and extract the wallet file?

Since that tool doesn't support encrypted wallets, the recovered wallet may not contain any keys.

Since salvage didn't work,
You can try pywallet's recov tool which supports encrypted wallets, here's an example command and link to the tool: /index.php?topic=5408068.msg60653031#msg60653031
It requires old python2.x to work. (check the repository for the requirements & dependencies)

BitMaxz

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Quote from: givemebackmybtc on November 07, 2022, 11:57:48 AM

Yes, that is exactly what happens. The salvaged wallet file doubles in size for some reason, and when loaded thru the core it says its corrupted.

Do you still have the original drive? Do you mind creating a new clone drive again and repeat the procedure to recover the wallet.dat file? This time make sure to use other software to recover them and other tools to create a new clone copy of your disks like Acronis, ghost, or Clonezilla.

I suggest burn a Hiren's BootCD or BartPE. It has many tools to use to clone and recover deleted files.

givemebackmybtc

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Quote from: nc50lc on November 07, 2022, 11:49:44 AM

Quote from: givemebackmybtc on November 07, 2022, 11:38:02 AM

I used the bitcoin-wallet command:

bitcoin-wallet -wallet=mywallet salvage

No errors, but still corrupted.

No errors, hmm, so it proceeded.
It should have created a wallet backup named after your wallet.dat file with a ".bak" extension inside the same directory as the wallet file. (can you confirm that?)
If it did and the salvaged wallet is still corrupted, then salvage can't do anything in this case.

BTW, the original wallet.dat is that ".bak" file.

Yes, that is exactly what happens. The salvaged wallet file doubles in size for some reason, and when loaded thru the core it says its corrupted.

nc50lc

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Quote from: givemebackmybtc on November 07, 2022, 11:38:02 AM

I used the bitcoin-wallet command:

bitcoin-wallet -wallet=mywallet salvage

No errors, but still corrupted.

No errors, hmm, so it proceeded.
It should have created a wallet backup named after your wallet.dat file with a ".bak" extension inside the same directory as the wallet file. (can you confirm that?)
If it did and the salvaged wallet is still corrupted, then salvage can't do anything in this case.

BTW, the original wallet.dat is that ".bak" file.

Topic: Found my old wallet.dat which seems to be corrupted. Please Help. (Read 502 times)